ah, i remembered now why i didn't took the gold to genoa. It's becuase I'm at -100 with all countries besides portugal at that time, and since Genoa is Italy's capital port I can't buy them off ^^;
all in all, gold trading to europe seems the most profitable for short periods, but requires quite some capital in starting the trade because of the market manipulating and starting investment, since whether it's north african or south american, most ports don't sell gold right off the bat. For starter routes, i'd suggest the ever-popular athens-istanbul arts-carpet run, mainly because it's the safest route around for an extremely short distance. If you're trading while exploring at the same time... running nutmegs or silk to europe from asia does have some profit, but you'll need a huge fleet and good captains to make decent profit from it.
|